The Ambassadors (40 page)

"Ah but a woman, in this tiresome place where everything's
always changing, a woman of good will," Madame de Vionnet threw
off, "can always help a woman. I'm sure you 'know'—but we know
perhaps different things." She too, visibly, wished to make no
mistake; but it was a fear of a different order and more kept out
of sight. She smiled in welcome at Strether; she greeted him more
familiarly than Mrs. Pocock; she put out her hand to him without
moving from her place; and it came to him in the course of a minute
and in the oddest way that—yes, positively—she was giving him over
to ruin. She was all kindness and ease, but she couldn't help so
giving him; she was exquisite, and her being just as she was poured
for Sarah a sudden rush of meaning into his own equivocations. How
could she know how she was hurting him? She wanted to show as
simple and humble—in the degree compatible with operative charm;
but it was just this that seemed to put him on her side. She struck
him as dressed, as arranged, as prepared infinitely to
conciliate—with the very poetry of good taste in her view of the
conditions of her early call. She was ready to advise about
dressmakers and shops; she held herself wholly at the disposition
of Chad's family. Strether noticed her card on the table—her
coronet and her "Comtesse"—and the imagination was sharp in him of
certain private adjustments in Sarah's mind. She had never, he was
sure, sat with a "Comtesse" before, and such was the specimen of
that class he had been keeping to play on her. She had crossed the
sea very particularly for a look at her; but he read in Madame de
Vionnet's own eyes that this curiosity hadn't been so successfully
met as that she herself wouldn't now have more than ever need of
him. She looked much as she had looked to him that morning at Notre
Dame; he noted in fact the suggestive sameness of her discreet and
delicate dress. It seemed to speak—perhaps a little prematurely or
too finely—of the sense in which she would help Mrs. Pocock with
the shops. The way that lady took her in, moreover, added depth to
his impression of what Miss Gostrey, by their common wisdom, had
escaped. He winced as he saw himself but for that timely prudence
ushering in Maria as a guide and an example. There was however a
touch of relief for him in his glimpse, so far as he had got it, of
Sarah's line. She "knew Paris." Madame de Vionnet had, for that
matter, lightly taken this up. "Ah then you've a turn for that, an
affinity that belongs to your family. Your brother, though his long
experience makes a difference, I admit, has become one of us in a
marvellous way." And she appealed to Strether in the manner of a
woman who could always glide off with smoothness into another
subject. Wasn't HE struck with the way Mr. Newsome had made the
place his own, and hadn't he been in a position to profit by his
friend's wondrous expertness?

Strether felt the bravery, at the least, of her presenting
herself so promptly to sound that note, and yet asked himself what
other note, after all, she COULD strike from the moment she
presented herself at all. She could meet Mrs. Pocock only on the
ground of the obvious, and what feature of Chad's situation was
more eminent than the fact that he had created for himself a new
set of circumstances? Unless she hid herself altogether she could
show but as one of these, an illustration of his domiciled and
indeed of his confirmed condition. And the consciousness of all
this in her charming eyes was so clear and fine that as she thus
publicly drew him into her boat she produced in him such a silent
agitation as he was not to fail afterwards to denounce as
pusillanimous. "Ah don't be so charming to me!—for it makes us
intimate, and after all what IS between us when I've been so
tremendously on my guard and have seen you but half a dozen times?"
He recognised once more the perverse law that so inveterately
governed his poor personal aspects: it would be exactly LIKE the
way things always turned out for him that he should affect Mrs.
Pocock and Waymarsh as launched in a relation in which he had
really never been launched at all. They were at this very
moment—they could only be—attributing to him the full licence of
it, and all by the operation of her own tone with him; whereas his
sole licence had been to cling with intensity to the brink, not to
dip so much as a toe into the flood. But the flicker of his fear on
this occasion was not, as may be added, to repeat itself; it sprang
up, for its moment, only to die down and then go out for ever. To
meet his fellow visitor's invocation and, with Sarah's brilliant
eyes on him, answer, WAS quite sufficiently to step into her boat.
During the rest of the time her visit lasted he felt himself
proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to
keep the adventurous skiff afloat. It rocked beneath him, but he
settled himself in his place. He took up an oar and, since he was
to have the credit of pulling, pulled.

"That will make it all the pleasanter if it so happens that we
DO meet," Madame de Vionnet had further observed in reference to
Mrs. Pocock's mention of her initiated state; and she had
immediately added that, after all, her hostess couldn't be in need
with the good offices of Mr. Strether so close at hand. "It's he, I
gather, who has learnt to know his Paris, and to love it, better
than any one ever before in so short a time; so that between him
and your brother, when it comes to the point, how can you possibly
want for good guidance? The great thing, Mr. Strether will show
you," she smiled, "is just to let one's self go."

"Oh I've not let myself go very far," Strether answered, feeling
quite as if he had been called upon to hint to Mrs. Pocock how
Parisians could talk. "I'm only afraid of showing I haven't let
myself go far enough. I've taken a good deal of time, but I must
quite have had the air of not budging from one spot." He looked at
Sarah in a manner that he thought she might take as engaging, and
he made, under Madame de Vionnet's protection, as it were, his
first personal point. "What has really happened has been that, all
the while, I've done what I came out for."

Yet it only at first gave Madame de Vionnet a chance immediately
to take him up. "You've renewed acquaintance with your
friend—you've learnt to know him again." She spoke with such
cheerful helpfulness that they might, in a common cause, have been
calling together and pledged to mutual aid.

Waymarsh, at this, as if he had been in question, straightway
turned from the window. "Oh yes, Countess—he has renewed
acquaintance with ME, and he HAS, I guess, learnt something about
me, though I don't know how much he has liked it. It's for Strether
himself to say whether he has felt it justifies his course."

"Oh but YOU," said the Countess gaily, "are not in the least
what he came out for—is he really, Strether? and I hadn't you at
all in my mind. I was thinking of Mr. Newsome, of whom we think so
much and with whom, precisely, Mrs. Pocock has given herself the
opportunity to take up threads. What a pleasure for you both!"
Madame de Vionnet, with her eyes on Sarah, bravely continued.

Mrs. Pocock met her handsomely, but Strether quickly saw she
meant to accept no version of her movements or plans from any other
lips. She required no patronage and no support, which were but
other names for a false position; she would show in her own way
what she chose to show, and this she expressed with a dry glitter
that recalled to him a fine Woollett winter morning. "I've never
wanted for opportunities to see my brother. We've many things to
think of at home, and great responsibilities and occupations, and
our home's not an impossible place. We've plenty of reasons," Sarah
continued a little piercingly, "for everything we do"—and in short
she wouldn't give herself the least little scrap away. But she
added as one who was always bland and who could afford a
concession: "I've come because—well, because we do come."

"Ah then fortunately!"—Madame de Vionnet breathed it to the air.
Five minutes later they were on their feet for her to take leave,
standing together in an affability that had succeeded in surviving
a further exchange of remarks; only with the emphasised appearance
on Waymarsh's part of a tendency to revert, in a ruminating manner
and as with an instinctive or a precautionary lightening of his
tread, to an open window and his point of vantage. The glazed and
gilded room, all red damask, ormolu, mirrors, clocks, looked south,
and the shutters were bowed upon the summer morning; but the
Tuileries garden and what was beyond it, over which the whole place
hung, were things visible through gaps; so that the far-spreading
presence of Paris came up in coolness, dimness and invitation, in
the twinkle of gilt-tipped palings, the crunch of gravel, the click
of hoofs, the crack of whips, things that suggested some parade of
the circus. "I think it probable," said Mrs. Pocock, "that I shall
have the opportunity of going to my brother's I've no doubt it's
very pleasant indeed." She spoke as to Strether, but her face was
turned with an intensity of brightness to Madame de Vionnet, and
there was a moment during which, while she thus fronted her, our
friend expected to hear her add: "I'm much obliged to you, I'm
sure, for inviting me there." He guessed that for five seconds
these words were on the point of coming; he heard them as clearly
as if they had been spoken; but he presently knew they had just
failed—knew it by a glance, quick and fine, from Madame de Vionnet,
which told him that she too had felt them in the air, but that the
point had luckily not been made in any manner requiring notice.
This left her free to reply only to what had been said.

"That the Boulevard Malesherbes may be common ground for us
offers me the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting you
again."

"Oh I shall come to see you, since you've been so good": and
Mrs. Pocock looked her invader well in the eyes. The flush in
Sarah's cheeks had by this time settled to a small definite crimson
spot that was not without its own bravery; she held her head a good
deal up, and it came to Strether that of the two, at this moment,
she was the one who most carried out the idea of a Countess. He
quite took in, however, that she would really return her visitor's
civility: she wouldn't report again at Woollett without at least so
much producible history as that in her pocket.

"I want extremely to be able to show you my little daughter."
Madame de Vionnet went on; "and I should have brought her with me
if I hadn't wished first to ask your leave. I was in hopes I should
perhaps find Miss Pocock, of whose being with you I've heard from
Mr. Newsome and whose acquaintance I should so much like my child
to make. If I have the pleasure of seeing her and you do permit it
I shall venture to ask her to be kind to Jeanne. Mr. Strether will
tell you"—she beautifully kept it up—"that my poor girl is gentle
and good and rather lonely. They've made friends, he and she, ever
so happily, and he doesn't, I believe, think ill of her. As for
Jeanne herself he has had the same success with her that I know he
has had here wherever he has turned." She seemed to ask him for
permission to say these things, or seemed rather to take it, softly
and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted, and he had
quite the consciousness now that not to meet her at any point more
than halfway would be odiously, basely to abandon her. Yes, he was
WITH her, and, opposed even in this covert, this semi-safe fashion
to those who were not, he felt, strangely and confusedly, but
excitedly, inspiringly, how much and how far. It was as if he had
positively waited in suspense for something from her that would let
him in deeper, so that he might show her how he could take it. And
what did in fact come as she drew out a little her farewell served
sufficiently the purpose. "As his success is a matter that I'm sure
he'll never mention for himself, I feel, you see, the less scruple;
which it's very good of me to say, you know, by the way," she added
as she addressed herself to him; "considering how little direct
advantage I've gained from your triumphs with ME. When does one
ever see you? I wait at home and I languish. You'll have rendered
me the service, Mrs. Pocock, at least," she wound up, "of giving me
one of my much-too-rare glimpses of this gentleman."

"I certainly should be sorry to deprive you of anything that
seems so much, as you describe it, your natural due. Mr. Strether
and I are very old friends," Sarah allowed, "but the privilege of
his society isn't a thing I shall quarrel about with any one."

"And yet, dear Sarah," he freely broke in, "I feel, when I hear
you say that, that you don't quite do justice to the important
truth of the extent to which—as you're also mine—I'm your natural
due. I should like much better," he laughed, "to see you fight for
me."

She met him, Mrs. Pocock, on this, with an arrest of speech—with
a certain breathlessness, as he immediately fancied, on the score
of a freedom for which she wasn't quite prepared. It had flared
up—for all the harm he had intended by it—because, confoundedly, he
didn't want any more to be afraid about her than he wanted to be
afraid about Madame de Vionnet. He had never, naturally, called her
anything but Sarah at home, and though he had perhaps never quite
so markedly invoked her as his "dear," that was somehow partly
because no occasion had hitherto laid so effective a trap for it.
But something admonished him now that it was too late—unless indeed
it were possibly too early; and that he at any rate shouldn't have
pleased Mrs. Pocock the more by it. "Well, Mr. Strether—!" she
murmured with vagueness, yet with sharpness, while her crimson spot
burned a trifle brighter and he was aware that this must be for the
present the limit of her response. Madame de Vionnet had already,
however, come to his aid, and Waymarsh, as if for further
participation, moved again back to them. It was true that the aid
rendered by Madame de Vionnet was questionable; it was a sign that,
for all one might confess to with her, and for all she might
complain of not enjoying, she could still insidiously show how much
of the material of conversation had accumulated between them.